Unreleased 'Famicom Adapter' redesign surfaces

Throughout the NES years, Nintendo decided to give the system a redesign later in the console’s life. That gave us the top-loader NES, which was definitely more eye-catching than the original NES design. Turns out Nintendo had yet another design in mind for the NES/Famicom, but it’s one that would never see release.

A piece of documentation from 1988 shows that Nintendo did have plans for an NES/Famicom redesign that was quite different from the top-loader that we got. Seen in the images above, this Famicom redesign is much closer to the style of the Super Famicom. This device was called a Famicom Adapter, and it seems to connect to the Super Famicom through a port on the side.

The Famicom Adapter seems like an odd creation, as it didn’t allow the NES to play SNES games, nor could you put NES games into your SNES. It really seems like nothing more than a way to hook up both your NES and SNES through a single cable. Not sure too many people would have bought a new NES just to link it to their SNES for no other reason than cable management, which is probably why Nintendo eventually scrapped the idea.